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Avatar Review

Much ink, or rather, internet ink, has been spilled over the new language and other finer details of the Avatar movie. Hence, I shall restrict this review to detailing out my observations about the movie.

1. The first question that came to my movie as I continued watching it was: Where is the power supply ? Towards the end of the movie, when the avatar creating cabin is kept inside an isolated part of the forest, where does the power supply come from ? Cinematic license, eh James Cameron ?

2. Much of Avatar seems to be heavily inspired from Matrix. The way they switch bodies and stuff. That makes one wonder about James Cameron's claim of incubating this movie for a long time. Pre-release publicity James Cameron ??

3. The claim made at the start of the movie is that the 10 ft tall creature is created using a combination of human DNA and the DNA of the natives. Now, the question that arises in my mind is this: when the 10ft tall creatures get into the forest and mix with the natives, how or what do they use to transfer the images back ? In one scene they show Sam Worthington recording his observations manually. In another scene, they show the images that he saw while he was in the 10ft creature avatar. Puzzling isn't it ? Not exactly.

Now, Avatar in Sanskrit means descent from heaven to earth, or loosely, changing forms. The Hindu Philosophy has known about this for ages and the Hindu mythology is full of stories where the activities in one avatar is recollected by another. If we use that notion of Avatar, point 3 can be easily explained.

Much of the movie, like Matrix before, tilts strongly towards Hindu philosophy.

While the last scene may look silly, childish and predictable to many, if you understand what Avatar exactly means, it fits in perfectly in the whole scheme of things.

Watch it especially for the brilliant special effects. James Cameron, as usual, has spent enough time in building up the story and characters. While one does get a feeling that he has rushed through the ending, there is no other way in which he could have ended the movie.

None of the actors seem to have had any major screen time to say that they have performed outstandingly. However, Sigrouney weaver does seem to have made sure that she is noticed amongst all the other star cast.

Shyam

PS: Now, why do I get a feeling that this movie would topple out Vijay's Vettaikaran, given that Avatar is having a tamil dubbed release ??

PPS: 2012, released in four Indian languages (English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu), grossed more here in India, than in United States.

Posted by Unknown at 10:55 AM